themattscott

When describ­ing the philo­soph­i­cal approach of the Upan­ishads, Michael Nagler states, “…meta­physics and ethics are one.“¹ I respect this con­cept in many ways, and I’ve often won­dered if my ethics (mean­ing my actions) will line up with my phi­los­o­phy or not. I recently had a chance to find out…I acted accord­ing to my phi­los­o­phy.

I’ve been unem­ployed for a week. Not to be employed is a strange thing for me, I started work­ing at 14 and since then haven’t been off for more than two weeks. The strange­ness of being unem­ployed isn’t what I’d like to address here; instead, I want to say a few words on why I was fired: I stood up to some­one that was bul­ly­ing others.

Since my first post on inclu­siv­ity a month ago, I’ve received a fair bit of flack for my belief that you shouldn’t exclude those who are hurt­ful to oth­ers. It seems to be a com­mon belief that the only means of action we can take against some­one who acts hurt­fully is to exclude them until they real­ize the wrong­ness of their action and can return to the group (or what­ever col­lec­tive) with a proper atti­tude. Against this com­mon belief, my pro­scrip­tion (which is to lov­ingly engage with the per­son doing the hurt) seems like an act of pas­siv­ity and apa­thy, or sim­ply put, like I’m “doing nothing.”

While I have yet to write a blog post on this par­tic­u­lar aspect (what “lov­ing engage­ment” looks like in gen­eral), I think the story of my fir­ing may serve as a bit of a stop­gap until I can write a more gen­er­al­ized post. I wrote the fol­low­ing two days before I was fired:

Tech­ni­cally, I quit my job today.

Granted, I was still employed when I left work today, and I remain employed now; but for a period of about an hour, I was no longer an employee of my company.

Why? Because I drew a line.

I work for a man that fre­quently acts as if employ­ment is own­er­ship. He also fre­quently loses his tem­per, leaves plain-nasty or just pas­sive aggres­sive mes­sages on voice­mails, and looks else­where for responsibility.

I also work for a man that I’ve seen com­mit acts of care and com­pas­sion. Last year, he loaned me two grand to pay for a semes­ter of school. He goes above and beyond in tak­ing care of his fam­ily. He has loaned, or even flat-out paid for, things his employ­ees needed in emer­gen­cies. He’s a decent guy.

I like work­ing for the lat­ter guy, but more fre­quently find myself in the employ of the former.

Yes­ter­day, he called me at 8 AM, and I was asleep, so I didn’t answer. He con­tin­ued call­ing over the next two hours, and had oth­ers try to call me as well (includ­ing 9 calls from a con­trac­tor that my boss was work­ing with at the time, all of which were done in the “call, get voice­mail, hang up, call back imme­di­ately” for­mat). He left two unpleas­ant sound­ing voice­mails, sent a text, and an email. I called him back when I woke up at 11. (I went to bed at 5 am)

The “why?” of the whole bit doesn’t mat­ter, I quit because of the fallout.

He was ter­ri­bly frus­trated that it took some of us sev­eral hours to return his call and because of a sim­i­lar inci­dent a week ago with another employee not return­ing a call. Both instances hap­pened while employ­ees were sleep­ing. Because of this, he decided to imple­ment a new pol­icy requir­ing all man­age­ment level employ­ees to imme­di­ately answer or return within fif­teen min­utes any phone calls we receive related to work.

When he said that, I sim­ply said “No.”

My com­pany is famously closed on Sun­days. It’s not because they want you to go to church (although they do), the con­cept of the sab­bath means that you are more than your labor output—you are a human, you need and deserve rest. Deny­ing your employ­ees the right to rest is an act of uncar­ing dis­re­spect. So I said no.

Each of the man­agers at the meet­ing felt the same way, but I am the only one that doesn’t “need” this job. I can walk away and be ok. Every­one else is mar­ried, has mort­gages, and most have kids, and each of these things requires them to main­tain sta­bil­ity. They can’t stand up to my boss because of it.

I can… and did. When he relented on the pol­icy, he said, “ok, if you can’t com­mit to it, then I won’t make you.” To which I responded, “I’m not wor­ried about me, I want the same respect for every­one else at the table.” So he rescinded.

My boss is a good guy, but he acts like a bully a lot of the time. While most peo­ple think you have to hit the bully to make him stop, that’s not my phi­los­o­phy. I pointed out that act­ing like a bully means you’re not the per­son you want to be. Undoubt­edly, he and I will sit down over the next few days and dis­cuss what hap­pened. I may not have my job after that con­ver­sa­tion because I’m not scared of a bully. I plan on telling my boss that he is a good guy and that I’ve seen him act­ing like a good guy, so stop act­ing like a bully.

Unfor­tu­nately, he and I never had the oppor­tu­nity to have that con­ver­sa­tion, since I was uncer­e­mo­ni­ously offered the choice to “quit or be fired” with­out any chance of dis­cussing why and how we had reached this point. I am, how­ever, pleased with my actions dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion I detailed above. Hope­fully, most of the mes­sages in this story are appar­ent, but I’ll briefly flesh out a few of the most impor­tant points (which should serve as a tem­po­rary expla­na­tion of how I believe we should deal with hate/anger/negativity/etc).

First, I had to let go of my  “right­eous anger” before I could reach a place where engag­ing with my boss had any poten­tial for a pos­i­tive out­come. I want my boss to act bet­ter, to be the per­son he can be, and I had to embrace that desire fully before I engaged with him. In “The Search for a Non­vi­o­lent Future,” Michael Nagler, the pre-eminent philoso­pher of non-violent engagement, says,²

…in the emerg­ing new way of think­ing about con­flict and rela­tion­ships it’s clear enough: the capac­ity to stand up to a bully and the capac­ity to for­give one—the strength of char­ac­ter to rise above anger, even if that anger is per­fectly justified—are closely con­nected. These qual­i­ties not only can coex­ist, they explain each other: strength is strength.

Sec­ond, please note that I made a con­scious effort to call out an action, and not to label my boss a “bully.” He acts like a bully some­times, but he is more than that. This is absolutely essen­tial in deal­ing with peo­ple who are act­ing hurt­fully: Do not dehu­man­ize them when try­ing to show them they are dehu­man­iz­ing oth­ers. Let me quote Nagler again,³

If it helps, call it evil. But be care­ful: there is a world of dif­fer­ence between call­ing some­thing evil and call­ing some­one evil. The first strat­egy mobi­lizes resources against the prob­lem; the sec­ond only recy­cles the ulti­mate cause of the prob­lem, which is ill will, resent­ment, lack of empa­thy, and even­tu­ally hatred.

Finally, I com­mit­ted the act in faith. I main­tained the hope that he would act dif­fer­ent, but did not make his change a pre­req­ui­site of my action. I under­took the move­ment of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the hope that he would rec­i­p­ro­cate. Unfor­tu­nately, the dynam­ics of the sit­u­a­tion dic­tate that I won’t be able to con­stantly re-engage with my for­mer boss, but I hold out hope that my actions will have some influ­ence on his con­tin­ual development.

I’ll write a more fleshed-out post on this topic later, and I’m plan­ning a post on “safe spaces” as well. I have a lot more to say in this series, so keep check­ing back for new posts.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Ethic, inclu­siv­ity, Love, Michael Nagler, phi­los­o­phy, Reci­procity, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, reli­gion, respon­si­bil­ity, Upan­ishads